Statement of Purpose and Goals

Grinding Up Stones: the Asian Adoptee ‘Zine is a biannual publication for adoptees by adoptees. Although it is targeted at teenage and adolescent Asian adoptees, it is intended to be a resource for all transracial adoptees – including adults.

Grinding Up Stones is a lyric from a Blue Scholars song entitled “No Rest for the Weary”. This is relevant to the experiences of transracial adoptees in that there is a great fiction we are taught as adoptees about where we came from, who we are, how we feel and what we can become. As transracial adoptees, we must grind these stones “until they turn into dust” in order to develop our own consciousness and write our own story.

The goals of Grinding Up Stones are:

• To provide young adoptees with language in understanding their experiences and express their feelings about being adopted;

• To help foster a racial consciousness while acknowledging the complexities of an adoptee identity;

• To introduce adoptees to the larger Asian adoptee community and help them to situate themselves within it;

• To create a space for adoptees to have a voice about their own lives and share their experiences;

• To provide a list of local, regional, national and international organizations for Asian adoptees;

• To create an accompanying website for those without access to the print publication;

• To educate and foster community amongst Asian adoptees;

• To provide information as well as person accounts concerning trips to the homeland and birth family searches;

• To review books, films and other resources about transracial adoption;

• To promote the work of transracial adoptees in various disciplines;

• To engage in larger issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and nation while recognizing that all of these identities inform and interact with one another.

Juli Jeong Martin is an artist and activist. Currently a second-year student at Oberlin College majoring in Comparative American Studies, Juli is invested in creating this 'zine as a way to inspire and educate young adoptees. She has self-published a chapbook of poetry dealing largely with issues of transracial adoption entitled "a stranger's womb/and other exiles". (read less)

Statement of Purpose and Goals

Grinding Up Stones: the Asian Adoptee ‘Zine is a biannual publication for adoptees by adoptees. Although it is targeted at teenage and adolescent Asian adoptees, it is intended to be a resource for all transracial adoptees – including adults.

Grinding Up Stones is a lyric from a Blue Scholars song entitled “No Rest for the Weary”. This is relevant to the experiences of transracial adoptees in that there is a great fiction we are taught as adoptees about where... (read more)